2) How do you feel about governments spending hundreds of millions of dollars on software in countries where a large percent of the population is homeless and hungry (eg Brazil). Wouldn't the governments be better off spending the money locally on support than importing software from the US?
Brazil is a terrible example there. Not only because the accounts of famine and misery are highly exaggerated (yes, I live in Brazil), but also the gov't is making the switch to FOSS. According to the government, all of the its servers and desktops will be running Linux in 2-3 years.
Yeah, but when it's FOSS you can fix it yourself instead of waiting for some shithead company do patch it. Most of the times the security patches come out a few hours or a few days after the vunerability is found. Compare that to the ridiculously slow reaction time of most closed-source software.
Really, if any of you are actually running Linux instead of just pretending to and badmouthing Micros~1, take a look at top(1). The CPU Idleness only falls below 90%, except when I'm compiling something or running SETI@home: CPU clock is a completely bogus measure of performance! All else being equal, a 2GH processor will have an identical performance as a 4GH one, because memory and video hardware are much more important nowadays. If you have an old video board you will experience slowness no matter how fast your Super-Duper-Glitzy-Pentium 900 is.
Besides, most consumers buy crippled and overpriced glitzy toys from the first store that they go to; Most non-tech people buy based exclusively on the quality of he advertising, and then go on to complain that "When I click on the start button thingy it takes a while for the other thingy to appear! Make my computer faster! NOW!"
Sounds like the first step to teraforming mars, as the red Mars trillogy depicted. Add gas to the atmosphere to thicken it, which retains more heat, which sublimes the polar dry ice/water ice caps, which adds more gas to the atmosphere.... Of couse, they speed it up by burning up large water asteroids in the atmosphere too, and digging large "moholes" down to where geothermic activity heats the air, and introducing modified algaes and liches etc...
Now, sending meteors and asteroids to Mars is easy. In space, there's no friction to stop a moving object, so all you have to do is push it towards the right direction. We can blow up meteors right? Pushing them towards Mars would require actually less power. GM algaes and lichens would be an easy task. Modifying them to produce certain gases, while simultaneously thriving in the Martian atmosphere is something that will be easy to do in, say, 20 years. As for the drilling, Mars' core is probably much colder (and therefore much deeper), so we'd have to assume that some 30 or 40 years from now (maybe less) drilling technology will be advanced enough.
All this been said, I don't see any reason why we shouldn't begin sending probes to do the first necessary tests, in order to start terraforming Mars.
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Brazil is a terrible example there. Not only because the accounts of famine and misery are highly exaggerated (yes, I live in Brazil), but also the gov't is making the switch to FOSS. According to the government, all of the its servers and desktops will be running Linux in 2-3 years.
Must... resist... urge... Arrrrghh! IN SOVIET RUSSIA, CLUE GETS YOU! Sorry.
Nintendo business plan: 1 Buy useless PalmOS software 2 ...
3 Profit!
Yeah, but when it's FOSS you can fix it yourself instead of waiting for some shithead company do patch it. Most of the times the security patches come out a few hours or a few days after the vunerability is found. Compare that to the ridiculously slow reaction time of most closed-source software.
Really, if any of you are actually running Linux instead of just pretending to and badmouthing Micros~1, take a look at top(1). The CPU Idleness only falls below 90%, except when I'm compiling something or running SETI@home: CPU clock is a completely bogus measure of performance! All else being equal, a 2GH processor will have an identical performance as a 4GH one, because memory and video hardware are much more important nowadays. If you have an old video board you will experience slowness no matter how fast your Super-Duper-Glitzy-Pentium 900 is.
Besides, most consumers buy crippled and overpriced glitzy toys from the first store that they go to; Most non-tech people buy based exclusively on the quality of he advertising, and then go on to complain that "When I click on the start button thingy it takes a while for the other thingy to appear! Make my computer faster! NOW!"
You're an exception. Most people don't have that much pr0n.
Sounds like the first step to teraforming mars, as the red Mars trillogy depicted. Add gas to the atmosphere to thicken it, which retains more heat, which sublimes the polar dry ice/water ice caps, which adds more gas to the atmosphere.... Of couse, they speed it up by burning up large water asteroids in the atmosphere too, and digging large "moholes" down to where geothermic activity heats the air, and introducing modified algaes and liches etc... Now, sending meteors and asteroids to Mars is easy. In space, there's no friction to stop a moving object, so all you have to do is push it towards the right direction. We can blow up meteors right? Pushing them towards Mars would require actually less power. GM algaes and lichens would be an easy task. Modifying them to produce certain gases, while simultaneously thriving in the Martian atmosphere is something that will be easy to do in, say, 20 years. As for the drilling, Mars' core is probably much colder (and therefore much deeper), so we'd have to assume that some 30 or 40 years from now (maybe less) drilling technology will be advanced enough.
All this been said, I don't see any reason why we shouldn't begin sending probes to do the first necessary tests, in order to start terraforming Mars.